The deed and the damage are done. And the county you call home is again indebted to everybody but you: the duplicitous duo.

Let your names be stained, like the company you keep.

Like Brutus and Judas. Like Benedict Arnold or Fredo Corleone, who coined the rat fink credo:

I can handle things! I'm smart and I want respect!

Tell it, Fredo.

Jefferson County Commissioner Jimmie Stephens last week blasted DeMarco and Carns as double agents in the legislative delegation's feigned and failed effort to help Jefferson County fund itself. He wrote in an email that the two were actively working with legislators from outside the county to kill the occupational tax, and "moved from sitting on the sidelines and doing nothing to help the county to actively working against a solution."

Stephens said he had simply "had enough."

He said he saw the collusion and treachery with his own eyes as Carns and DeMarco, in a legislative committee meeting, planned and placed the poison pill. He saw Carns, with a look, direct cub Rep. Dickey Drake to call for the bill to be tabled. Which was, effectively, its death sentence.

Carns called the allegations a "lie." But the fact is, nobody with the county's interests at heart really expects more from Carns. He's the one who voted in 1999 to repeal the occupational tax in the first place. Then, as commission president, he passed a budget a third higher than the one the county now must live within. Then he returned to the legislature to inflict more county carnage. Or is it Carnsage?

County officials expected more from DeMarco.

With DeMarco, they thought they had a friend. He has roamed the county with his sunshine and light. He proposed the county manager bill that brought us Tony Petelos -- and two more layers of bureaucracy. He brought the car tag bill, which will let suburbs sell car tags, and give residents there even less contact with or concern for the county. He even organized secret sessions to talk of an occupational tax plan.

He now acknowledges he did not like the version of the occupational tax bill that Drake tabled and, barring a last-minute reprieve, killed. He prefers a not-yet-invented "once and for all" solution.

Does that make him a traitor, as county officials suggest? I asked him.

"I've been working on a solution," he said.

Which was not an answer. So I asked him again.

"It's easy to say 'oh, there's a traitor' because we disagree," he said of commissioners. "The citizens have said differently."

I asked a third time, straight out:

Are you a traitor?

"I'm working in the best interests of the county," he said.

I wanted more.

I wanted a "No." I wanted a "Hell no." I wanted passion and purpose and proof that Paul DeMarco gave two hoots for Jefferson County. Instead, a so-called leader of Jefferson County's rudderless House delegation gave me apologist politi-speak.

It was, in Watergate terms, non-denial denial.

Leaving no doubt that he, not to mention Carns, did exactly what Stephens claims.

They moved, beneath the surface, to submarine a financial life raft for their home county.

Et tu, fellows. You won't be able to stab us in the back next time, though. We'll beware the ideas of DeMarco.